In his decades-long career as an investigative reporter, Tony Kovaleski has often risked his own safety for the sake of the story. Angry subjects have pushed him, cursed at him and otherwise tried to shake the longtime Denver7 reporter and his camera crew as they sought responses to allegations of fraud, abuse and self-dealing.
That goes with the territory when you’re asking questions like, “Do you want to explain why you chopped up bodies?”
“That was one of those interviews where the guy was carrying a shovel,” Kovaleski, 66, said of his KMGH-Channel 7 story about the FBI’s investigation of a Montrose funeral home in 2019. He had confronted the funeral-home owner’s father outside his garage after being turned down for scheduled interviews.
“Part of the time I was wondering if the blade of that shovel was going to find its way to my face,” Kovaleski said. “I interviewed a sheriff once in Arizona who said, ‘You know, if you turn up dead there’s going to be a long list of suspects.’”
Kovaleski’s stories have won him more than 50 local Emmys and other awards over his 42 years on camera, leading to his role as Chief Investigative Reporter for Denver7. But after officially retiring on Dec. 31, 2025, he’s looking forward to stepping back from the contentious, illuminating, policy-changing investigations he’s become known for since joining Denver7 in 2001 (his first of two stints there).
And between his three daughters, three grandkids, longtime romantic partner Katherine, golf, Texas Hold’em Poker, skiing and other pursuits, there’s plenty waiting on the other side. But as his current news director, Megan Jurgemeyer, put it, saying “no” is just the beginning of the conversation with him.
“It’s probably one of the reasons I’m divorced,” Kovaleski quipped.
Denver7 will air a special called “40 Years of Accountability” that marks Kovaleski’s achievements at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. The station is also recounting Kovaleski’s career — which has found him working across the Southwestern U.S. — by nightly revisiting some of his biggest Colorado stories next week.
Those include digging into lengthy response times of ambulances at Denver International Airport; the Montrose funeral home investigation; Denver Health paramedic policies; troubled mental health hospitals in Johnstown; financial abuses at Pinnacol Assurance; the secret filming of women at a Party City location; and Colorado Humane Society’s animal-disposal policies.
Some of them came after lives were lost and the families reached out to Kovaleski. All led to significant changes in the wake of the monthslong projects. His mission is to do right by his community, he said, and that means questioning powerful people such as governors and U.S. senators, CEOs and religious leaders, and anyone accused of serious crimes.
“There’s a whole handful of people who are not happy with me or my reporting, and many of those people, including executives, have lost their jobs. Some ended up in jail, laws were changed, and accountability happened,” said Kovaleski, a Castle Pines resident. “I’m not an advocate, I’m a journalist asking questions. I do my homework before sitting in front of a decision maker. But occasionally the roles dovetail.”
Kovaleski was born in Michigan and raised in the Bay Area. He earned his broadcast journalism degree from San José State University, having just missed the 4.0 grade-average cutoff for dental school (for which he had spent four long years preparing). His play-calling for San Jose’s sports teams on the college radio station ignited his passion for sports. He thought he might become a minor-league baseball announcer.
But it was his first television job in Eureka, Calif., that showed him the power of journalism, as distant as that time now seems.
“My first time on camera, we had black-and-white TVs on set, if that gives you any perspective,” he said, “The (Associated Press) bell would ring any time they moved a big story. We had teletype machines in the newsroom, and the click-clack was the theme and sound and flair of the environment.”
In addition to Eureka, Kovaleski also worked on-air in Reno, Nevada, Phoenix, Houston and San Francisco. But he considers Colorado his home, having returned to Denver7 again in 2015 after previously working there from 2001 to 2012. He ran alongside celebrated and influential investigative journalists such as John Ferrugia and Paula Woodward in a city that was then flush with robust competition from a pair of major newspapers and well-staffed TV and radio stations.
“(Station owner) Scripps came to the table with a package that is an opportunity to grow my career, to talk to and train other reporters at 30 stations,” Kovaleski told The Denver Post at the time. “The company is all in on investigative, all in on Denver.”
Kovaleski can easily spend more than a year working on a single story as he forges contacts, interviews dozens of people over hundreds of hours, and negotiates anonymity for those risking their jobs to speak with him. That’s why he often had five to 15 projects going at once, he said, which is not uncommon in journalism, but did always give him plenty of flaming chainsaws to juggle. He’s still got one more big story to break, which viewers can see soon.
“You feel a responsibility to the community you cover, especially when people reach out to you,” he said. “But no story I’ve ever done was alone. It’s the sources and colleagues like photographers and editors and other people who bring things to the table that make these stories.”
Kovaleski said he’s grateful to go out on his own terms, which is not always the case in broadcast journalism, as longtime anchors and reporters can be retired without notice. His daughter Jennifer Kovaleski, another celebrated investigative journalist who has worked with her father in more than one market, will take over for him at KMGH. He’s proud of her but also knows she’s run the journalistic gauntlet as much as anyone and said she is not getting preferential treatment at the station.
“I’m thankful it’s gone this way, and that she’ll continue the station’s investigative legacy,” he said. “It’s a nice way to put an exclamation point on my 40-year career. But while I’m leaving the newsroom, I’m not leaving the community, which I plan to stay active in. What I’m doing is looking forward to starting my next chapter.”